Nothing, nothing, nothing would induce her to risk the first move again, to be the asker instead of the asked. She had been wrong-footed last time by the knowledge that she came to him instead of he to her. But she desperately needed to see him and to talk to him. So instead she talked about him to Hazel, with bitterness grinding deep.
Sometimes she wished Flora Vosper was still alive. It had been better then. Coincidentally or significantly there had been a sourness in him since Flora died. She had been a centre for his life, a stabilizer. And if he wasn’t with you, you knew at least where he was likely to be. Now no one had any idea where he was likely to be. Pearl only knew that if she accepted Wilfred’s invitation she would see him next Tuesday.
Where Godfrey was that afternoon Pearl would never have guessed. Yesterday he had jarred his hand taking his frustrations out on the punch-ball, and Pat Prince had said: ‘Take a day off, boy. You’ve been going at it all week. You don’t want to be over the hill by Tuesday.’
So Godfrey took the day off, and after lying in bed most of the morning reading the strips in some American mags he suddenly dragged on his clothes and ran out to his Velox and drove off. He kept south of the river for a time and then crossed and soon joined the A12 north of Ilford. From there it was all familiar driving, bypassing Brentwood and Chelmsford and striking north. It was a good enough day for the end of January with heavy clouds but gleams of wintry sun, and the roads were not wet. He had a sandwich and a Coke at a lorry driver’s pull-in and reached Handley Merrick soon after three.
He was careful not to park his car outside the gates of Merrick House but backed into a lane near by and strolled up to look at the old house. The gates were shut and there seemed no sign of life. He wondered if Mr and Mrs Forms were still in occupation. It didn’t look like it because last week’s snow hadn’t quite melted, and you could see it had never been cleared off the steps.
He climbed over the low wall and sidled round the house, whistling silently to himself. All quiet. He went up to the windows of one of the kitchens and peered in. The place was completely unchanged from when he had lived there; furniture, table, cooking pans, ancient Aga, cupboards, crockery. He walked round to the front and climbed on the sill of a window to look into the hall. This great gaunt room was just the same too: refectory table, tall-backed chairs, armour on walls, suits of armour at foot of stairs, battle flags, the two cannon.
He went on to the wing where Flora had lived. She might only just have left it. Except that a curtain hung loose from a window – that she would never have stood for – and there was dust. The declining sun fell on this window and showed up the dust.
He slouched round to the next window and found as he expected that nobody had repaired the defective catch. He pushed it up with his penknife, opened the window, climbed in.
It was cold. That was the first difference. It wasn’t too bad outside, but inside it was as cold as the tomb. It had been impossible ever to heat the whole house without a completely new system which would have been vastly expensive, so Flora had had pipes and an oil-fired boiler put in just to heat the eight rooms she lived in. Flora was always one for comfort, so these rooms normally had been pretty warm. Going out of them in winter to the rest of the house had been like going out of doors. You put on a coat or you ducked rapidly back.
Now this heated part was as cold as all the rest. Like Flora. It had lost its heat.
Whistling through his teeth, Godfrey sat in his favourite chair and looked at the empty chair opposite him. You only had to imagine a little and there she was opposite you, dark haired and sallow skinned and sardonic and middle-aged and witty and irritable and a dare-devil. Smoking and drinking all the more because she wasn’t supposed to. Poking fun at him. Learning him things. One jump ahead. You never knew when you had her. Even in bed. Old bitch. Old bitch.
Godfrey got up and looked around the room. Everything was just as they’d left it last time they had been here. It was all locked up, preserved in aspic till the will was proved or until some lawyer, some fat stupid lawyer like Angell, decided something. Until then here it all was. You could nick things and nobody’d be the wiser. All that malarkey about getting a few of his own things sent on, and then they left the whole lot for anybody to nick who came along and could force a window.
He wandered into her bedroom, and here some things had been taken. Miriam, he supposed, claiming personal belongings of her mother. He went into his old bedroom, and from there passed into the long corridor that led to the big hall and the great house proper.
It was still light when he got to the hall. The setting sun was staining the windows but in a few minutes it would be going dark. What was that fool thing Flora often said? ‘Life is too short for cynic peep or critic bark, quarrel or reprimand; ’twill soon be dark.’ She usually said it just after she’d had a row with someone, for God’s sake! Well it had gone dark for her now.
When you come to think of it, and looking round this hollow gaunt room, maybe there wasn’t all that much to nick. Who’d want a cannon? Who’d want a flag that’d been waved at some goddam place called Malplaquet? Who’d want a suit of armour?
Godfrey had always thought the main house a bit of a mausoleum, and now and then in the dark days of winter his hair had pricked as he went up and down the stairs and poked about in one or other of the main bedrooms with their four-posters and their tapestries and their crests. Well, it was soon going to be a dark day of winter now. Even while he stood there the sun plunged behind the trees and left the hall clammy and shadowy and chill.
One day last winter he had walked through the house with Flora while she had told him all about the Vospers. Not that she was a Vosper herself; he reckoned she came from something better than a line of bloody generals; but anyhow she had told him about them. And he had said, what was the use of it, all this crap about swords and shields and flags and who fought against who and when? And she had said: ‘Little man, little man, if you ask that, nothing’s any use, any time, any more. We’re chaff on a floor that the wind blows away. But wouldn’t you prize the Lonsdale belt if your father or your grandfather had won it?’
He walked out into the library; and here somebody had been at the books. They weren’t so much disturbed as fewer in number. Miriam again, pawing them over, wondering which she could sell without it being noticed. Mostly they were musty old books of battles and collected editions of the classics; but you never knew what would fetch money these days.
As he walked round the shelves he thought he heard a footstep in the hall. That made his hair prickle. He turned and went back to the door.
The light was fading quickly, and there were a lot of shadows where there had been no shadows five minutes ago. The two suits of armour at the foot of the stairs glinted in the dusk. There might have been men in them. Maybe now the house was empty all the flaming Vospers had come back to live in it. Champing their jaws, flaunting their medals and rattling their bones.
Then he thought he saw a figure move from behind the stairs and slip towards the corridor to the west wing. It was just a trick of the light but it looked like Flora. Sturdy figure, dark heavy hair, brisk mannish step.
‘Flora!’ he said. And then he stopped, and rubbed his hand through his hair and sniggered. Silly twerp. There was no Flora here. Flora had been turned into best ash. Aristocratic cinders. Blue-blooded urn fodder. She was off the market for good.
He went to the foot of the stairs.
‘Flora!’ he called softly.
He couldn’t see properly now, and he flicked the light switch. Of course the current was off.
He went up the stairs. ‘Flora!’ he shouted into the echoing passage at the top.
A tattered flag. A steel engraving of some battle scene with guns blazing and horses snorting. A table with a model of a Sherman tank on it. A Chinese screen. A hole in the carpet.
‘Flora!’ he shouted.
The bedrooms along this first passage were the principal bedrooms, furnished in a mixt
ure of heavy Jacobean and Victorian. They were, as always, draped in sheets, and the doors and sills were thick with dust. These bedrooms faced north.
‘Flora!’ he shouted. ‘ Flora!’
He went in and out of the gloomy rooms, opening doors and slamming them, while the dark crept round him and followed him everywhere.
‘Flora!’ he screamed, half laughing at himself, half serious. ‘Flora!’
The bloody woman was dead, rotten, burned, and the episode was over. Nothing would ever be quite the same again.
‘Flora!’ he shouted, having looked in ten bedrooms and drawn blank. ‘ You old cow! Where are you? Flora!’ If anyone heard him they’d think him off his trolley. For God’s sake. ‘Flora!’
He clattered down the stairs again, and in the dark barged into one of the suits of armour. It clattered its metal bones, and he steadied himself and went off towards the door that led to the occupied – or formerly occupied – rooms. His nose and eyes were wet with laughing at himself and he wiped them on his sleeve.
At the door he looked back into the misty angles of the dark hall. It was all dead, long ago dead and best burned like Flora and forgotten. He slammed the door behind him and groped his way into the drawing room that Flora had used. But there was nothing there for him. It was empty, sour, stale, and neglected, like all the rest. He did not know why the hell he had bothered to come.
He opened the window and climbed through it, shut it behind him, and tramped off through the overgrown garden to find his car.
Chapter Seven
Godfrey and Tokio Kio did not meet until the weigh in on the Tuesday at 1 p. m.
It was the usual gathering; the boxers, their managers or trainers, the Board of Control doctor, the matchmaker, a few old pugs and hangers on. They drifted in one by one as the time drew near. It was all shabby and casual and in a low key. The two Japanese were the last to come, and with them was Sam Windermere the promoter, a small grey-haired man with a red cheerful face. He introduced Godfrey, but instead of shaking hands Kio bowed from the waist like a dummy. Kio’s manager said, smiling: ‘Hullo, Vosper. Glad to know you.’ Godfrey nodded distantly. He was strictly against fraternizing.
They all went inside to get undressed. As the chief fighters of the evening they were given first turn on the scales. Godfrey was eight stone nine and a half pounds, Kio eight stone eleven. They looked much the same height, but Kio had heavier shoulder muscles.
Then the doctor. Sound your heart, look in your throat, prod here and there. ‘Take a breath. Let it go.’ ‘Are you feeling well?’ ‘Any dizziness?’ ‘ Any sickness?’ ‘Any headaches?’ ‘When was your last fight?’ ‘Stand up straight. Stand steady.’ ‘O.K.’
Kio understood some of the questions, but his manager stood beside him to interpret the others. When he was passed he bowed in the same way to the doctor and went in to dress. For God’s sake, Godfrey thought; the manager’d better be in the ring too tonight. To Godfrey a man who couldn’t speak English was a savage from outer space.
All the same you could see he might be a tough nut. Somebody’d flattened his flat nose, and one of his ears wasn’t so good. A tough nut to be cracked.
Jude Davis wasn’t there this morning, Pat Prince had come along. Jude, he said, had a touch of ’flu. But he’d be there tonight.
He’d be there tonight. Godfrey felt there was something odd about things. Davis had been cool, unwelcoming these last weeks; yet he’d arranged this fight which was the sort of chance any boxer would jump at but almost never got. A ten-round work-out with a champion who was only concerned to win on points, principal bout, all notoriety to Godfrey after for lasting ten rounds, and £600 as his purse into the bargain.
Well, don’t look a gift horse …
After the weigh in Godfrey drove Pat Prince back, and Hay Tabard who was fighting on the same bill, and Tom Bushey the coloured heavy. Young Tabard was eating at home, and Pat Prince got off at Oxford Circus, so Godfrey drove Bushey to one of the Angus places and they had a big juicy rare sirloin each.
Bushey was a queer case, Godfrey thought; a classy African from the West Coast, son of one of the chiefs, who’d come over to England to read Law, failed his finals, done odd jobs for a year or so and then after some amateur bouts had turned pro nine months ago. He’d won all his five pro fights but was still a long way from the top, – further than Godfrey, maybe because there was more competition in the top weights. Godfrey had been on two bills with him, and in so far as Godfrey had any friend in his new stable, Bushey qualified.
They talked over the meal. Bushey wasn’t fighting tonight but had been up at the gym sparring with Billy Oscar who was fighting at Wembley in two weeks. Just before they separated Bushey said: ‘Well, good luck for tonight, man. I’ll be there watching. You’ve got a tough assignment.’
‘I’ll deal with him,’ said Godfrey.
‘Watch out for his right. He’s a spoiler. I saw him work out in the gym yesterday. He doesn’t make the best use of his reach, but he’s going to be very difficult. He’s not pretty to look at.’
‘I’ll see what I can do to make him not pretty to look at afterwards.’
They both laughed. Bushey said: ‘By the way, what was that man Birman doing at the weigh in?’
‘What man Birman?’
‘That bald headed little man with the sharp eyes.’
‘I don’t know him. So what?’ Then some memory clicked in Godfrey of seeing such a man watching him curiously at the weigh in.
‘Birman’s Agency,’ said Bushey.
‘What is it, a sports agency?’
‘Yes, they have their sports side. They’re arrangers. They do everything: divorce, the lot. Birman’s the head. You see, man, I worked for him for a while, though he didn’t cotton on this morning.’
‘Doing what? Fighting?’
‘No. I was on my beam ends – didn’t want to go back home – looking around. I met him in a bar. He wanted some private inquiries made and reckoned a Negro would be less noticeable than a white man. I said O.K. Then I did other jobs. Then I didn’t like his outfit so I got me another job.’
‘So what’s it all about then? What am I supposed to do? Tell the B.B. B.C. who they can let in to the weigh ins?’
They came out into the street. It was a nasty February day with a strong searching north-east wind. Odds and ends of paper blew before it along the pavements. Dogs walked slightly sideways, their fur ruffled.
‘I reckon I’m seeing things,’ said Bushey, ‘so it means nothing at all. But I just don’t like the Birman outfit, and I don’t know why he should be interested in us. And, man, I don’t like Birman. He’s a feller that knows a thousand people but doesn’t have a friend.’
Godfrey was hardly attending. It occurred to him that he had five hours to pass before he needed to be at York Hall and he didn’t know how to pass it. It wasn’t the time to get himself a bird. Most boxers went home after the weigh in – had a good meal and a rest. But his bed-sitter and strip-cartoons wasn’t much of a home. Before his last fight he’d had that silly cow Flora Vosper to talk to.
‘How about you and me going and seeing a flick?’ he said. ‘You doing anything?’
‘No …’ said Bushey, and looked at him. ‘Maybe you’d be better taking a sleep.’
‘Who says I’ll be better?’
‘Well, it was just a thought. But O.K., if you feel like it, I’ll go along.’
Pearl had known Wilfred less than a year, but she already knew him too well for him to be able to hide his moods. She saw that he came home early tonight with an appearance of casualness put on to deceive her. Under the calm, tension was running, like a dynamo that you could feel but not hear. He got her to cut sandwiches and when she had done them he wolfed them down as if he had an urgent appointment. He told her twice how they would go: York Hall, he said, was just near Bethnal Green tube station there was simply no point in hiring a car, they could catch a 137 bus in Sloane Street to Marble Arch, and then a direct tu
be all the way to Bethnal Green. The total cost of the journey this way would not be more than 3/6 for the two of them. It was a fine night, though cold; a little walk would do them both good. Not to dress up, of course; the most casual clothes, one would not want to be conspicuous in the East End. He did not realize, Pearl thought, that however he dressed his size and manner would make him so.
There was something greedy about his looks tonight. She caught him looking at her sidelong the way she had noticed him doing when he wanted to sleep with her. Yet he had achieved that only four days ago and it was too soon for him to want her again, or if not too soon to want her too soon to yield, because he thought his health suffered. Anyway, they were going out; one did not know how late they would be; and they were going to see Little God. Somehow Little God was involved.
She almost feigned sickness and called the whole thing off, just to measure the degree of his disappointment. Yet her need to see Godfrey was great. She wondered why Wilfred’s need was great.
Leave at 7.15. The contest did not begin until eight, and then there would be two or three bouts before the main one. But one did not quite know how long it would take to get there. So the bus and the tube. It was cold out but hot in the underground, and Wilfred mopped his brow like a nervous applicant for a job. They climbed out of the earth at ten minutes to eight. In Bethnal Green the frost was crisp in the air. They were directed across the traffic lights to a big grey building, up the steps, tickets and a programme, into the hall. The M. C. was just climbing into the ring.
It was like a big gymnasium, the central ring raised above the body of the hall. Very full. Promoter Sam Windermere had a sell out.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask you to please take your seats, as the first contest is about to begin …’
They took theirs, in the first row of the seats proper – not ringside but very near. Little iron seats with canvas bottoms and backs fixed together in rows. Wilfred pushed his way in, treading on toes and shuffling through. When they sat down it at first seemed quite impossible. Wilfred sat on his arm chair and overflowed onto the next. Pearl could hardly take her seat; the man on the other side was insulting: ‘If you want two seats, Guv., why don’t you pay for ’ em?’ Wilfred was full of indignation at the discomfort of the seats, and the commonness of the people around him who in a Welfare State could afford such a price.